The Seconde Française 19.24

From BEAUBLEU -

Courtesy of BEAUBLEU

The Seconde Française collection is a limited release - 888 pieces in total.

Courtesy of BEAUBLEU

It boasts a French made movement, and the watch as a whole is assembled in Paris.

Courtesy of BEAUBLEU

I will endeavor to get some more details and provide a longer piece on this brand, and its latest offerings. Stay tuned!

Until then, here are some of the pertinents -

The case is of stainless steel with a display back, measuring 39 mm in diameter, water resistant to 5 atmospheres.

The movement is Festina's, via France Ebauches: 

MANUFACTURE FRANCE EBAUCHECALIBER FE MOVEMENT - AUTOMATIC
POWER RESERVE - 46h
ACCURACY +7/-7 SEC.DAY

Reasonably priced at $1,326

The "Lab Peripheral Dual Time Big Date"

From Perrelet -

Courtesy of Perrelet

Available in three different dials blue (above), black (below)... 

Courtesy of Perrelet

And silver.

Courtesy of Perrelet

Here are the pertinents, straight from the 

source -

Movement:

Manufacture Perrelet P-421 caliber, mechanical automatic movement Fitting diameter: 31.60 mm
Total diameter: 34.80 mm
Thickness, including oscillating weight: 6.32 mm

Vibrations per hour: 28.800 (4Hz)
Jewels: 30
Power reserve: 42 hours
Balance-wheel shock protection system: Incabloc
Circular-grained and rhodium plated main plate
Bridges: rhodium plated, adorned with a Côtes de Genève motif
Oscillating weight: rhodium plated, circular-brushed, engraved grooves pattern

Functions:

Central hours, minutes and seconds hands
Big date window at 12 o’clock
Second time zone with day-night indicator at 6 o’clock

Case:

Cushion-shaped, polished-brushed stainless steel, octagonal bezel Size: 42mm x 42mm
Thickness: 13.51 mm
Anti-reflective sapphire crystal glass on both sides

Case-back with sapphire crystal glass, secured by 6 screws Water resistance: 5 ATM

Dial:

Three color variations: silver, deep blue and black
Central part with vertical decoration and circular-brushed rim, surrounded by a matt sandblasted ring
Cut-out hour-markers filled with SuperLuminova
Luminescent hours and minutes hands
Central seconds hand
Silver, black or blue flange for seconds indication on a scale of 5
Oscillating weight visible on dial side, engraved grooves decoration
Date window at 12 o’clock (two white disks with black Arabic numerals on silver and blue dials – two black discs with white Arabic numerals on black dial)
Circular grooves decoration on the second time zone counter at 6 o’clock, round aperture between 10 and 11 o’clock for day/night indication

Strap:

Black calf leather strap with white stitching on silver and black dial executions Blue calf leather strap with white stitching on blue dial version
Stainless steel folding clasp embellished with the Perrelet logo

Retail Price: CHF 4.980,00

A New Voice at Tempus Fugit

This year marks ten years (in July) for Tempus Fugit.  And truthfully?  Ten years is really more than enough to listen to just one point of view.  And owing to this, I am particularly pleased to announce that you will soon also find the insightful opinion of another industry veteran - Francis Jacquerye.

Francis comes from Belgium, the other chocolate "making" country, and broke into the watch industry after contacting several companies with a design and being hired on the spot by the Sector Group. He worked on a dozen fashion licenses in Italy before completing a lengthy recruitment process with Longines in Switzerland, where he was promoted to Head of Design within 4 years.

Before opening his own agency and giving a little push to friends who were launching Tsikolia, Gavox and Gorilla watches, Francis released limited editions under the brands Techné and Tärnan. He relocated with his family to southern Sweden in 2015 to help put together and launch Kronaby.  He also was working to personally relaunch Siduna. When Kronaby filed for bankruptcy in Spring of 2019, he helped the Festina Group to preserve a dozen jobs from the software division.

Having been on both sides of the curtain as a watch collector and an industry professional, Francis has been trying to foster a honest dialogue between brands and consumers, but he is not afraid of calling his peers when they are bluffing. Before the rise of social media he curated WatchProjects.com to try and give visibility to more than 200 micro-brands, and in 2009 he inadvertently helped to uncover the Seiko roots of the TAG Heuer calibre 1887.

Francis likes to challenge preconceived ideas about the past, present and future of watchmaking; and in 2013 he published "The Speedmaster Standard", which compared the price of watches, wages and cost of life across several decades.

Francis borrows from economics, social science and marketing to explain the dynamics of luxury and watches, and he was nominated a Top Writer 2018 by the knowledge sharing platform Quora.com, where he has been garnering more than 3,000,000 views.

I am thrilled to have Francis join me here, and know that you will truly enjoy and learn from what he has to share.

Once Upon a Time in Malmo

So news broke on Friday that the Festina Group had acquired the assets and intellectual properties of Anima, the parent company of Kronaby.

So, in essence, Festina has acquired the former darlings of the connected watch world.  And have done so at a fire sale price.  Here is the release exactly as it was forwarded to me by another journalist -

Madrid - Spain, March. 08, 2019 – Festina Lotus SA has announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire from the Bankruptcy Estate of the company Anima AB, their assets and intellectual properties, including the hybrid watch brand Kronaby. Anima AB, based in Malmö, Sweden – designs, develops, manufactures, markets and distributes the hybrid smartwatch brand Kronaby. The acquisition, subject to certain conditions, is expected to be finalized in March 2019. Several of Anima/Kronaby functions and operations will be integrated into Festina Group. The ten-person Research & Development team focusing on Application, Cloud and Analytics development will remain in Malmö. The acquisition has been conveyed by Trägårdh's law firm, Malmö, Sweden. 

"We are happy to be able to find a solution together with Festina Lotus SA. They have a long experience of the watch and jewelry business, and we believe that the Festina Group will bring great opportunities and vision to the Kronaby brand and the technology it is based on” says Pål Borge, co-founder of Kronaby. "The capabilities of the Festina Group are so much more extensive and we look forward to see the development of the Kronaby brand in the future.”

The President of the Festina Group, Miguel Rodriguez, commented, "It is an important acquisition for us, we not only bring in a new brand to our existing portfolio, we also take a step into the smartwatch segment. Kronaby has proved to be one of the best hybrid smartwatches in the world and the newly integrated people and technology will play an important role in the strategic future of our Group. We all know that the world is constantly changing and connected devices are something we all have around us in our daily life.”

So what does that mean for the staff at Kronaby?  Well, suffice it to say, the word around the campfire is that most of them will be contacting their local unemployment office.

I have to say, in all honesty, that this is one of the most dramatic rises and falls in this business that I have seen in the time that I have been involved in it.  And if I am really honest?  It didn't have to go this way.  

So what went wrong?  Probably a lot of small things, each one on it's own not enough to sink the ship.  But like a poison pill, you swallow it, and slowly it makes it way through.  But at it's root?  This was a fairly fundamental misunderstanding of how the watch business actually worked.  And that was evidenced in several areas including marketing, sales and PR.  Inevitably, a few fundamental things have to happen:

1.  Your PR function needs to actually LIKE the press and be willing to communicate with them, rather than just hang onto the good looking influencer at the party.  Because, curious to relate, it is the press who will get your product and message out there.

2.  Your marketing has to try to shake off millennialitis.  This can be challenging, because all of the data tells you that millennials represent a huge buying group.  This is true, but as a group?  They are not really  buying watches, with, perhaps, the exceptions of Apple and Samsung watches.  Your marketing team needs to message to people with actual money who will actually spend it on your actual product.

3.  Your sales team needs to understand that merely opening a store is not the same as actually selling watches.  If watches are sold, they actually need to be paid for, meaning that, in theory, monies should be received by your HQ in a reasonable amount of time.  The watch business is a goofy one, and one that all too many people think that they can outsmart, and they ultimately get their heads handed to them for their trouble.  A store on memo is going to pay Richemont, LVMH, SWATCH, everyone else, and finally, eventually, maybe you.  But most likely not. 

Kronaby was a wonderfully charming, romantic story...
until it wasn't.  

Lather, Rinse, Repeat - Enter the Carousel

This originally ran back in 2015, and as we are now nearly 30 months down the line (think about that for a moment), it seems even more relevant now than it was when I first pushed it out there.

While I realize that a certain "fortunate son" is assuring us that sales are up, and the Swiss Federation numbers would, in theory, bolster that notion with their export reports of the past two months, the retail realities do not bear this notion out.  Not yet at least.

Brand managers continue to crow about their latest yacht, polo match, or celebrity "chum", so it seems that the lesson still has not sunk in.  Think I'm full of it?

The Grey Market and it's red-headed stepbrother the "Soft Grey" Market continue to offer brand new watches, in many instances directly supplied by the brands themselves, and in some instances even faster than the authorized retail stores can get them.

And with that wonderfully sychophantic press/influencer element out there that (for the right fee) will continue to sing a brand's praises, it is easy to presume that everything is just great!

While I can't think of anyone who does not genuinely want to see things rebound and improve (I mean, we all like money and steady employment, right?), the realities are still the same.

Retail has not returned to the same levels, advertising revenues are down for the majority of print and  digital outlets with some long time employees being let go and not replaced.  In other words, a lot of longtime industry professionals, retail lifers and media employees continue to find themselves surplus to requirements.  

So here we go again -

Brand Managers and CEOs, Enter the "Carousel"...

 This is the time of renewal.

With the slew of smart watches being now literally flung out at an ever increasingly rapid pace just prior to BaselWorld, the biggest question is about usefulness and functionality.  As I said previously, I do think that the solution that Frederique Constant, Alpina and Mondaine have come up with is far and away the best, most practical one available and I think it actually is functional.  

Having said that, a few of us got to thinking "outside the smart watch box", and theorized about what other useful smart watch apps could be created.  

I have often written and railed about the now all-too common practice of what I will refer to as the 3 year plan.  In essence, a CEO, brand manager or rep is hired and if they are lucky, they will last 3 years.  If they are successful they will probably be replaced because they will then be too expensive. If they are not successful they will be let go for obvious reasons.  And it is generally in the second or third year that these folks start getting really nervous, really anxious about their future.  This can be stressful, and your quality of life can really suffer as a result.  It is understandable.  So in an effort to ease the pain, this was a smart watch app that some of us felt was apt.  The Life Clock App.

It is based on the "Life Clock" popularized in Logan's Run.  For you millennials out there, Logan's Run was first a novel but more well known as the movie with Michael York. In this futuristic society, nobody has to work, everything is easy.  You are pretty much free to literally "follow your bliss". 

 

The main problem with this being that this level of indolence is not really sustainable as a "business model".  Therefore you have to sort of cull the herd to ensure that there will be enough to go around. Essentially, you have until you turn 30, then your "Life Clock" will light up letting you know that your time is up.  When that happens you are summoned to what is known as the Carousel where you and all of the other 30 year old folks in your group will be "surplussed" or more specifically, vaporized.

The belief being that you will then be "renewed".

Which brings us back to the tenuous and all-too-often brief tenures currently being experienced by brand manages and CEOs.  How can we take some of the guesswork out of it?  Well, every problem has a solution - and it seems every solution has an App!

So you download the Life Clock App on your smart watch and sync it with your phone.  Don't worry, it will support both iOS and Android platforms.  Then you start that new position as CEO and hit GO. Your Life Clock App is now synced to your current job and dutifully counting down the years, months, weeks and days until you will need to update your resume and look for that next position. Worried that you might not remember your work anniversary?  Don't be!  The Life Clock App has got you covered!  It will give a red glowing signal as you are approaching your 3 year anniversary.  Then a stern, all knowing voice (my vote would be James Earl Jones) will say:

Enter the Career Builder Site.  This is the time of renewal.

For everyone out there still searching, stay positive, and stay away from the Sandmen!

Brand Managers and CEOs, Enter the "Carousel"...

 This is the time of renewal.

With the slew of smart watches being now literally flung out at an ever increasingly rapid pace just prior to BaselWorld, the biggest question is about usefulness and functionality.  As I said previously, I do think that the solution that Frederique Constant, Alpina and Mondaine have come up with is far and away the best, most practical one available and I think it actually is functional.  

Having said that, a few of us got to thinking "outside the smart watch box", and theorized about what other useful smart watch apps could be created.  

I have often written and railed about the now all-too common practice of what I will refer to as the 3 year plan.  In essence, a CEO, brand manager or rep is hired and if they are lucky, they will last 3 years.  If they are successful they will probably be replaced because they will then be too expensive. If they are not successful they will be let go for obvious reasons.  And it is generally in the second or third year that these folks start getting really nervous, really anxious about their future.  This can be stressful, and your quality of life can really suffer as a result.  It is understandable.  So in an effort to ease the pain, this was a smart watch app that some of us felt was apt.  The Life Clock App.

It is based on the "Life Clock" popularized in Logan's Run.  For you millennials out there, Logan's Run was first a novel but more well known as the movie with Michael York. In this futuristic society, nobody has to work, everything is easy.  You are pretty much free to literally "follow your bliss". 

The main problem with this being that this level of indolence is not really sustainable as a "business model".  Therefore you have to sort of cull the herd to ensure that there will be enough to go around. Essentially, you have until you turn 30, then your "Life Clock" will light up letting you know that your time is up.  When that happens you are summoned to what is known as the Carousel where you and all of the other 30 year old folks in your group will be "surplussed" or more specifically, vaporized.

The belief being that you will then be "renewed".

Which brings us back to the tenuous and all-too-often brief tenures currently being experienced by brand manages and CEOs.  How can we take some of the guesswork out of it?  Well, every problem has a solution - and it seems every solution has an App!

So you download the Life Clock App on your smart watch and sync it with your phone.  Don't worry, it will support both iOS and Android platforms.  Then you start that new position as CEO and hit GO. Your Life Clock App is now synced to your current job and dutifully counting down the years, months, weeks and days until you will need to update your resume and look for that next position. Worried that you might not remember your work anniversary?  Don't be!  The Life Clock App has got you covered!  It will give a red glowing signal as you are approaching your 3 year anniversary.  Then a stern, all knowing voice (my vote would be James Earl Jones) will say:

Enter the Career Builder Site.  This is the time of renewal.

For everyone out there still searching, stay positive, and stay away from the Sandmen!

Perrelet's new caliber - Alternance 10 (A10)

It is always exciting to hear that another watch brand has moved closer to self-sufficiency by launching an
in-house movement.  Today the news came that Perrelet has joined the ranks of companies with firmer control of their own futures.  As a member of the Festina group, Perrelet is now seeing some real benefit from its membership.

Courtesy of Perrelet

Here are some details from the folks at Perrelet:

The A10 caliber, produced entirely within The Festina Group, features:


A new escapement featuring optimized efficiency and balance spring.

An automatic 11 ½''' movement, beating at 28,800 vph. Robust and reliable it has earned Chronofiable* certification and which may, on request, also benefit from COSC chronometer certification.

Several variations - three hands plus date, three hands with visible balance, along with skeletonized models.

A broad range of additional functions which to date includes Large Dates, Dual Time-Zone with day-night indicator, Power Reserve, 24-hour indicator, Chronograph and Small Seconds.

The A10 also incorporates custom-made complications and in particular Perrelet's signature Double Rotor modules. 

And this is Perrelet's Peripheral Double Rotor, featuring the in-house A10 Caliber Movement.

Courtesy of Perrelet

CEO Fausto Salvi had this to say -


"Today more than ever, having in house means of developing and producing horological specialties represents a great opportunity. Production autonomy is an extremely important issue and an aspect that enables us to remain in the avant-garde of our field. Witness the recent acceleration we have undertaken in diversifying the Double Rotor modules. The A10 movement represents a milestone achievement for us; we are well on the way towards complete independence"
www.perrelet.com